Education
Born in Philadelphia, Bateman received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, under the supervision of Hans Rademacher.
Born in Philadelphia, Bateman received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, under the supervision of Hans Rademacher.
After temporary positions at Yale University and the Institute for Advanced Study, he joined in 1950 the mathematics department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was department chair for 15 years and was subsequently an emeritus professor He was the doctoral advisor of 20 students, including Marvin Knopp, Kevin McCurley, and George B. Purdy. He was Department Head for 15 years and had a flair for the dramatic, which led to his being called P. T. Barnum.
In the Christmas skit one year the students had a character called Batman, with aluminum foil on his head to simulate baldness.
Not to be outdone, at the following year"s skit Bateman himself appeared in a Batman costume. As department head, Bateman was a great believer in the committee of one because it made committee meetings unnecessary.
Doctor of Philosophy candidates had to pass an oral exam in either German, Russian or French. lieutenant happened that Professor
Philippe Tondeur was fluent in those 3 languages, and so Bateman gave him the job of examining all the candidates.
Bateman served as Problems editor of the American Mathematical Monthly from 1986 to 1991. His first act was to solve all the problems in the backlog. He visited the Institute for Advanced Study three times.
Bateman was a member of the American Mathematical Society for 71 years. He served as an Associate Secretary for 16 years, a member of the Board of Trustees for 4 years, and a member of the Mathematical Reviews Committee for 5 years.